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Joe Philbin defends defense after 516-yard debacle at Indy

Coach Joe Philbin defended his defense Monday, a day after it gave up a season-high 516 yards to rookie quarterback Andrew Luck and the Indianapolis Colts in a hard-fought 23-20 loss.

The Colts averaged 6.9 yards per offensive play, converted 13-of-19 third-down opportunities and held the ball nearly 10 minutes longer than Miami (34:54 to 25:06) while outscoring Miami 10-3 in the second half to rally from a 17-10 halftime deficit to their fifth win of the season.

Indy’s offensive explosion dropped Miami from 22nd to 24th in the league in total defense and from 27th to 29th in pass defense.

“I have a lot of confidence in our defense,” Philbin said. “I like the way they play the game. Obviously, that wasn’t one of their finer performances. When you’re a really good football team, which we’re not yet, because our record states that, as [much] as our defensive guys are disappointed, they made a stop when they had to and we had the ball first and 10 on the 50-yard line with two and a half minutes to go.

“We didn’t play very well on defense, but you have to win those games. I’m not overly concerned about the yards. The points, entering the game I think we were fifth in the league in scoring defense. That’s not a bad collection of work for seven weeks, (and) 23 points I don’t think is going to drop them down to 10th.”

Philbin did not defend, however, the team’s performance on third down, where seven of the conversions resulted from third-and-9 or longer.

“Where do you want to start? I wish we could put out finger on one thing. We used multiple calls. We used zone. We used man. We spied. Again, I’m going to say they executed very, very well in that phase of the game, better than we did.

“It wasn’t always the pass rush. At times our discipline in our pass rush lanes wasn’t great. At times our coverage wasn’t very good. At times we maybe had some shots to get Luck down and we weren’t able to do that. Give him some credit. We have to do better. It wasn’t one thing. There were 19 third downs. There was enough (blame) to go around.”

Philbin couldn’t help but be impressed by Luck, who set an NFL record for passing yards by a rookie.

“He played a good game. I was hoping we would play better on defense. But again, he played well and his guys played well around him. They made some nice catches. It wasn’t like I was ‘Gosh, I hope No. 12 plays a bad game so we can win.’ I knew he was a good player. And to his credit, he played well.”

He also felt his own rookie QB Ryan Tannehill, who was questionable to even play after suffering a hyperextended knee a week earlier against the Jets, held his own in throwing for 290 yards, his best total after his 431-yard performance against Arizona.

“He looked like Ryan Tannehill when you watched the film,” Philbin said. “He threw the ball on the run very well.”

But Tannehill didn’t escape some veiled criticism.

“Like everybody else, part of his job and our offensive job in the second half is you’ve got to make plays at critical times. That has to happen.” Miami managed only one field goal in the second half.

Looking ahead, Philbin said he and his staff have to take into consideration the fact that their team will be playing two games in the space of five days, starting with Tennessee at home and Buffalo on the road a week from Thursday.

“The big thing is, the wear and tear on the players’ bodies is going to be a concern. We’ve got to make sure we’re smart; we’re going to look at the injury report once we get it, and figure out a smart plan both to get ready to play this game and another game four or five days after that. That’s certainly an issue and we have to be smart about our preparation, no doubt about it.”